The Introduction

Wow.
The first entry to a new blog.
This is the first blog I've ever dedicated solely to training and racing.

While the goal of this blog is to document my exploits in training to become the youngest male ever to finish the Virginia Triple Ironman, I'd prefer to keep some sort of human element to it.
In short, I'd like to focus less on endurance-geek jargon, and more on glorifying the ultra-fitness lifestyle. That is...if you can glamorize drooling on yourself as you scuff your feet from aid station to aid station, craving V8 mixed with Powerade and raw potatoes dipped in salt, smelling like a gangrenous donkey.

I would like to state this first and foremost. I am an average dude.
I used to love talking up my training, and bragging about distances I'd run or how fast I'd ridden my bike, and this was pre-Ironman....so really, I was just running my mouth. There were plenty of people's Grandmothers who were more badass than me.
And then I started Ultras.

Ultra-distance events humble you. If you are loud-mouthed, they will quiet you. If you are not confident, they will build you up upon finishing. In short, they might be the best therapy in the world.

After I finished my first event, a 40 Mile Run, I didn't call everyone I knew to brag that I had run 40 miles. I had come face to face with myself, and knew that there was no turning back. I wasn't doing it to impress anyone. It was for me. It was me.

I need this Triple Ironman. It presents more than a physical and mental challenge for me.
Discipline and injury prevention has never been more important than for this event.
I trained pretty loosely for my 40 and 50 mile runs, and my training for Ironman was a joke.
This event scares me enough to force me into yoga, stretching, and early morning training.
Knowing that I finished these events on minimal training gives me confidence that I can apply myself and finish this monster.

Sleep deprivation will also be a new factor for me. The Triple requires two full nights without sleep. I will be on the bike for the entire first night, and running through the next. In short, I will see three, count 'em...three sunrises during this race.

The line is fine between enthusiastic and neurotic, and maybe I've crossed it....but before you make that judgment, you may want to run a mile in my shoes....or 100....

I'll leave you with this quote from David Blaikie of Ultramarathon Canada:
"It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances, they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being -- a call that asks who they are."

Happy Trails!

kp